RE: [Paddlewise] Racks on pickups

Geoff wrote: " I had a Ford Explorer, with Yakima towers and cross bars
mounted to the factory roof rack slider bits.   My wife and I did a trip
to Baja, carrying a surf kayak and a 22 foot Seda Tandem.  We drove some
amazingly bad "roads".   At a checkpoint, I went to shake the boats, to
make sure the straps were tight, and the rack moved.   Huh?  I checked
closely, and the rack and TORN the sheetmetal.   The expansion bolt
things had ripped the metal of the roof, on opposite corners of the
rack, clearly from the flex of the truck versus the rack.  And this was
on a one piece SUV.   
 _____________

I've heard similar reports from body shop people.  FACTORY RACK has a
nice, solid connotation to it, but they're literally screwed into
expansion fittings and are held down by the roof sheet metal.  My old
Subaru had a notoriously "soft" roof -- either Thule's or Yakima's
description in the 1997 timeframe.  A bow and stern line -- or two -- on
each kayak kept things of a piece, but I also checked the roof rack on a
frequent basis.

Have been away from the list, and don't want to walk on past debates,
but I won't carry anything on the roof without bow and stern lines to
hardpoints near the bumpers.  Had I not had them on my Audi A4 wagon
when I was hit by the F250, the driver would have had a very close view
of the stern of my overly sharp-ended CLC Northbay as it entered his
windscreen at his eyeball level.  The stern line partially melted from
the heat of its own stretch at the impact, but it held.  The Audi
factory rails held where the roof hadn't buckled, but the Thule cross
bars failed structurally.  The bow and stern lines saved that idiot's
life.  They also helped the constant stresses of car-topping kayaks to a
manageable level.

Yeah, bow and stern lines -- it's just an opinion.  But I've saved that
fried REI eight mm climbing line if anyone's interested in a defense of
that opinion.  Empirical evidence that bow and stern lines serve
multiple functions, and, at least in one case, saved a life.

Jack
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